Talking with a friend about TLOU2 recently (we both had mixed, maybe ultimately negative feelings about it, despite enjoying the first one), and something he proposed during that conversation made me more frustrated at the game’s insistence upon being as violent and full-of-crafting and “adult” and just AAA Games-y as it is:
what
if
the whole game took place in Jackson, as Ellie, walking around talking to people and exploring her relationships. Walk around, talk, hang out. What if instead of The Last of Us, this were Firewatch? To me the most interesting thing about “a sequel to The Last of Us” is addressing the ending of the first game, which I would argue was such a clear and end-stopped statement about the game’s characters that the idea of a sequel—especially one which is only a mechanical iteration on, rather than interrogation of, the first game—seems insulting.
Now, this would obviously never happen (which is why the idea hadn’t even occurred to me), because AAA Games (derogatory, lol) as a phenomenon are generally gutless and their content is dictated by what will sell, and turning The Last of Us into Life Is Strange (or Tokimeki Memorial, or whatever) wouldn’t sell. I don’t much like the idea of the first game, which I agree feels like some kind of prestige TV wannabe, and whose writing isn’t unique, but I did like the story it told, a lot, despite those caveats. What the sequel amounts to seems like turning Ellie into a more depraved version of Joel, which ultimately comes across as a squandering of that character’s potential. I think everything that happens to her in the game “makes sense,” but it’s just not very surprising or new. I got exactly what I expected.
I won’t pretend I predicted all the plot beats and character moments, but when Naughty Dog or Druckmann or whoever explained the game took its subtitle from The Godfather Part II, I thought, “Oh, that’s what this game will be like.” And then it was.